I’m driving a buggy across Mars. It’s a rover called Spirit. We roll over rocks. It’s a bumpy ride. Well, I’m not really on Mars. But
Spirit is. I’m on Earth, and I can see everything through Spirit’s cameras. I tell Spirit what to do: Stop! Dig up some soil. Test it. Send the results. Spirit obeys me. Now that’s what I call remote control!
Solar System Lessons I’m a planetary geologist. I study the geology of the planets and moons. I learn when and how space objects were formed. One thing that I look at is how these space objects have changed over time. Some kinds of changes happen fairly quickly. Other changes happen really slowly. To study other planets and moons,
we compare them to Earth. We’ve discovered a lot of strange stuff in our solar system. We also find things that are familiar. T ey look just like something we see on Earth. For example, Spirit sends back a
picture. T e picture shows an old vent from a volcano. It looks just like vents around volcanoes on Earth.
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MERCURY Planetary geologists want to know how Earth’s look-alikes formed. It’s not always in the same way! Take a look at Mercury. It’s the
planet closest to the sun. Mercury has some very large cliff s which are faults or large cracks. One is called Beagle Rupes. It looks a lot like a big fault in the United States. T ere, two parts of Earth’s crust,
called plates, began to move slowly. One plate slowly rose on top of the other. T is formed the cliff . Mercury’s crust isn’t made up of
plates like Earth’s. Over millions of years, Mercury’s core cooled. As it cooled, Mercury slowly shrank. Its hard crust cracked. T e broken pieces moved slowly
together. T ey rode up on top of each other and formed cliff s.
The rover Spirit explores the surface of Mars.
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